For many reasons, true longevity in the music industry is hard to come by. Trends are always changing, as are artists’ creative interests. Sometimes personalities clash, sometimes bands simply get tired of each other. For every band that lasts five years, there are (at least) a hundred that don’t. Different groups have different recipes for overcoming these odds, but regardless how you slice it, It’s tough out there. With that in mind, a thirty five year career in the business is a commendable feat. Such is the case for seminal jam band moe. Hailing originally from upstate New York, moe. has built a durable career in the oft-changing industry. Their rise, occurring in tandem and parallel with the rise of the jam scene in the northeast and beyond in the early and mid 90’s is one of the more interesting of that era. Since those early days, the band has traveled a long way, literally and metaphorically. A bedrock of the jam scene, moe. has constantly evolved over the years while touring hard. They’ve played, hosted, and anchored some of the most important festivals in the scene (Summer Camp, LOCKN’ and several early Bonnaroos, among many others), long establishing themselves as leaders in the jam world. These days, moe. continues to push forward. With a strong, expansive new album (Circle of Giants), a newish member (Keyboardist Nate Wilson was made a permanent addition in 2023), and a continued emphasis on their always energetic live show, moe. is firing on all cylinders in 2025. They return to the Twin Cities on Sunday October 19 at the Fitzgerald for what promises to be a fantastic show.
Below is an Interview with moe. drummer Vinnie Amico. The following has been edited for consistency.
Music in Minnesota: Thirty-five years of moe. That’s incredible, to say the least. You’ve been around for about thirty of those. What do you credit with the band’s longevity? It goes without saying that most bands don’t last anywhere near thirty-five years.
Vinnie Amico: One is that we’re all friends, and we like each other. We’re a family at this point, our whole adult lives we’ve been together through marriages, children, death, sickness, everything. The playing is the big thing, we really enjoy playing music with each other. The fact that we’re still writing relevant and good music and continuously bringing out new songs. And the fanbase! People still come out to shows and like the music and come and support us. It’s a lot of stuff that bands don’t get. I mean, all of the bands that end up with a hit end up not lasting, probably because they can’t follow it up or don’t spend the time cultivating a fanbase over the years.
MIM: I want to ask about Circle of Giants, the new record. I’m curious what having a great keyboard player like Nate adds as far as the sound goes, and what options that gives you guys. I know he’s been on the road with you for awhile now.
VA: Well, first off he’s a great musician so he helps us all because he’s so good. If there’s a wrong chord in a song, he’ll be like “that doesn’t work” or whatever. I think his influence musically adds to all of our influences. moe. records when they’re made, we’re all influenced by different artists and that culmination makes our sound. Now we’ve just added another person who is a great musician but also has a different set of influences. So, It adds another element to the music all together. He’s also a great songwriter, in a style that isn’t necessarily the same as the former moe. iteration. Now we’ve added another songwriter that adds another dimension to the songs and music.
MIM: I’m curious, in 2025, who are some of your influences as a drummer.
VA: Well, I’m still stuck in the seventies (laughs). New Drummers, there are so many great drummers out there on the internet. I’m still figuring out old drummers. The new ones are really good at chops and really good at playing with themselves, I still am really interested in drummers that add an element to the songs and the band and the music. I’m still stuck on the Neal Pearts, the John Bonhams, and the Phil Collins’ and all of those guys that played with the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers that are part of the unit. There’s a million great drummers out there now, and I pick stuff up from them to work on and improve my playing and add different elements. But I’m still very interested in contributing to the song and being part of the band.
MIM: As far as the studio goes, on this record or any record, I’m always curious how bands like yourself that are so known for your live show go about bottling that and bringing that to the studio. You guys have always made good studio records.
VA: Over the years, we’ve been pretty good about working the material live before we get into the studio and then cutting the fat off. We’ve been good at that. We’ve also written some songs on the last few records where we wrote them and did them in the studio where we haven’t had time to sus them out live. We’ve been together for thirty-five years so I think we’ve gotten pretty good at our craft. We know what it’s like to make a live show and/or record, and we know what it’s like to make a studio record. There’s a focus on getting a really good take. Not necessarily the best take as far as performance goes. Usually it’s the energy part we take along with the performance. There’s a fine line between a good performance take-wise and energy, so it doesn’t get stale. The last couple records, we’ve used a really great engineer who is really good at harnessing that. He’s like “That was a good take, that felt really good.” I might be like “I messed this up” or somebody might say did this or that, but the energy on the take was the best one.
MIM: Well, the proof is in the pudding on this record, I think it’s a great record. You guys have always made good studio records. I want to ask about one particular song on the record. “Giants” I feel like is a psych prog epic of sorts. How did that one come about? It’s such a towering piece of music.
VA: That’s Nate, he’s really into all sorts of psych rock vintage sounding songs. He wrote that one and brought it to the band. That was a late add to the record. We had seven or eight tracks done that we recorded in Vermont. We had a name for the album, Circle of Gaints and were kind of maybe short on music. So at one point it was in the fall, rob was like “Hey we should go up to my barn and set up and maybe get a couple more tunes together.” So that was one of the songs we got together in that session and got added to the record. And the name fit. It’s an awesome tune.
MIM: To change gears a little bit, I do want to ask about live shows, specifically I want to ask about festivals. You guys are playing a theater gig here, but when I think about moe., I think about festivals-from Summer Camp to early Bonnaroos, hosting to your own, you guys have probably played as well as anybody. Can you speak to the role festivals have played in moe.’s career?
VA:They’re A big part of the growth and maintenance of our fanbase. We were doing festivals before they were a big thing, even starting with Berkfest and some of the early rock fests and H.O.R.D.E. and all that stuff, even before the jamband thing was happening. It’s been a big part of our touring experience. It’s so different to play a festival compared to a theater show. Your game kind of different, you put more of the greatest hits or what would encapsulate moe. to a beginner or someone who has never heard us before. You tend to put a lot of your rockin’ or your epic in there. At least In my mind, there’s a bit of a competition factor as well-you want to be as good or better as the other bands on the bill-so you’re performance gets raised to another level. Not that you’re not trying to play your best every night, but there’s a thing that if some band went on before you and rocked out, you can’t suck after that (laughs).
Then there’s the fact that we have curated and done our own festivals for twenty-plus years. We know how festivals run, from the inside out. There’s kind of all aspects of the festival that have been part of our business model, our growth and maintenance, and honing of the performance of it.
MIM: Something you hit on is the early jam scene. I do want to ask bout that. moe. predates and is very much a part of that early jam scene. In those early days, who did moe. look up to as the jam scene was less defined in those days?
VA: Early on, moe. was more in, believe it or not, more of an indie or punk scene-because there was no jam scene. In Buffalo, I played in more of the hippie scene-I was playing in a Grateful Dead Cover band that played acoustic one night a week-that was where all the deadheads and hippies hung out. moe. was playing in three and four band bills with bands like scary chicken and monkey wrench-bands that were way more indie, way more hard rock bands. They were influenced more by the Chili Peppers or Fishbone or things in that sort of lane. Then, as they started to expand, traveling outside of buffalo, sharing gigs with different bands in different towns, and then getting into the Wetlands scene in New York, that’s when they had to start lengthening their songs because you had to play for two hours or whatever (laughs). You’re also playing with other bands and hanging out and getting different influences being around all of that stuff. That’s where that whole scene started, there were all of these bands post-grateful dead, and Phish was starting to make it’s way to the top I guess you could say. The next tier, you could say, was Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Rusted Root, ARU, and all of these bands, the H.O.R.D.E. sort of bands, they were forging a new thing that nobody had ever done. There was no subculture other than the grateful dead until those bands started doing H.O.R.D.E. Phish took the baton and carried it forward, and then the next level of bands started to happen, which was like moe., Yolk, the Ominous Seapods, From Good Homes, and all of those bands from the mid-Atlantic, and then there were bands from Atlanta and String Cheese and Leftover Salmon from Colorado. There was a scene bubbling on the next level that was what became the jam scene.
